The Suppressor by Erik Carter (best free novels .txt) 📗

Jake turned to him. “What I did in New Orleans. It was me. You were just along for the ride. If any flack comes our way, I’ll be the one to absorb it.”

Charlie smiled weakly, a bit of relief in his eyes.

“Besides,” Jake continued, “I told you to get out of this life while you still could.”

In New Orleans a couple days earlier, when Jake had taken actions that cost Lukas Burton a significant amount of money, Jake had seen an opportunity for Charlie to get out of the criminal life. As a cop, Jake couldn’t turn a blind eye to the crimes he’d seen Charlie commit, but he could get the kid out before he got himself hurt. Charlie was a decent soul, the sort of person who had a short life expectancy in the criminal world.

The Taurus puttered louder as it gained speed, pulling onto the I-110 on-ramp. It listed to the side on its spongy suspension, and Jake grabbed the grimy window crank for support.

“Maybe Burton doesn’t run the show just yet,” Charlie said as they merged into the streaks of headlights and taillights. “But he might soon enough. And we’ll be in for a world of hurt.”

Chapter Five

Jake stepped into the warm glow of the Farone mansion and was struck by the smells of well-oiled leather, musky colognes, furniture polish, brandy, wine. The place reeked of power and tradition—a jarring difference from Charlie’s Taurus, which he’d exited moments earlier, its scent one of scarcity.

The place was old wood, all of it—the walls, floors, ceilings, moldings. Big rectangles of dark brown. The gloss of high-shine varnish. The only break in the rectangularly wooden nature were the arches that topped the doorways and windows, as well as the wrought-iron balustrade that encircled the second-floor balcony, which looked down upon green leather chairs, long sofas, antique tables, spacious rugs.

Several people had gathered in the great hall, and they were split into two groups with a clear demarcation between the unofficial, unspoken divisions.

Ruckus energy emanated from the west side of the room, by the inlaid shelves heavy with sculptures and paintings and books, where Lukas Burton and his hangers-on had congregated.

Nine of them. Cocky grins. Sharp, spiking belts of laughter. Hulking figures that leaned against tables and walls, ambling legs crossed in front of them. Rough hands squeezing tumblers of liquor.

Burton was in the center of the group, and he laughed suddenly, deeply, booming over the din of the boisterous men surrounding him. His severe, handsome face tilted back, thin lips stretching wide. He smacked one of his companions on the back.

Jake turned back to his own group, eight people. There were laughs on his side of the great hall as well, but they were quieter and flavored by unacknowledged apprehension.

They were near a set of bow windows that looked to the lush, expansive lawn, which was well lit, making it look crisp and bright against the inky nighttime sky and the dark forest on the other side of the road.

Jake looked away from the stars and the wispy clouds, across a courtyard where, fifty feet away, there was another set of windows, drapes open, bright light pouring into the night.

The library.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves full of stately hardbacks. Chairs and little tables. More polished wood. C.C. would be in there somewhere, but he couldn’t see her. She must have been lying on her favorite sofa, as she was prone to do.

He pictured her stretched out, covered with a quilt, her dark curly hair splayed on a tasseled throw pillow, eyes squinted with concentration as she studied an esoteric tome—seventeenth-century philosophy, perhaps, or a biography of Houdini’s wife, or a Moroccan cookbook.

Charlie approached. He picked at a fingernail. “This is not good, Pete. Just look over there. Burton and his guys might as well be their own gang.”

Jake glanced back across the broad no-man’s-land of hardwood floor, twinkling with points of light from the chandelier above. The other group’s boisterous loitering continued. Burton’s arm was draped over Christie Mosley, the only female in the room. Her gray eyes looked out from beneath choppy bangs, shining with the energy she was absorbing from all the other, gawking eyes.

Her dress was a beacon for the attention, a dark brown number that tightroped the line between elegant and trashy, leaning toward elegance, as Christie’s noteworthy curves conformed to the surroundings in the same way as the sophisticated glass vase glowing under a spotlight on the shelf behind her—both shapely forms with sinuous lines that pleasingly dissected the austere linearity of the mansion.

Christie was one of two people who were constantly in orbit around Burton. Currently, they both flanked him—Christie on one side, and on the other, Clayton Glover, a pit bull of a man, with a squarish face, prominent nose, and squinting eyes. He smiled up at Burton.

Charlie continued picking at his fingernail. “I’m telling ya, Pete, it’s coming soon. Burton’s gonna take over the operation. What are we gonna do?”

Before Jake could respond, another man moved toward him. A silver tray with several glasses of white wine and one bottle of Heineken was perched on the outstretched fingers of his white-gloved hand. He wore a three-piece suit—black jacket and tie, gray vest.

The beer was especially for Jake. He didn’t care for wine. He also preferred a burger to a ribeye. C.C., as lovingly as possible, described him as having an “unrefined palate.”

He smiled as he grabbed the beer. “Thanks, Saunders.”

The butler nodded.

Saunders was seventy or so, gray hair, stout frame, English with a pronounced accent, and had been with the Farone family long before Jake’s brief tenure. For decades, actually. His background was mysterious, but Jake knew Saunders had been an RAF mechanic during the war. While he’d served honorably, Saunders spent his hours out of uniform in a not-so-honorable fashion, earning side money as hired muscle for a London crime outfit. From there, he’d hopped across the pond and somehow ended up in Pensacola as the